BrokenBack Mountain
"Jack, I got a work. Them earlier days I used a quit the jobs. You
got a wife with money, a good job. You forget how it is bein broke all
the time. You ever hear a child support? I been payin out for years
and got more to go. Let me tell you, I can't quit this one. And I can't
get the time off. It was tough gettin this time -- some a them late
heifers is still calvin. You don't leave then. You don't. Stoutamire
is a hell-raiser and he raised hell about me takin the week. I don't
blame him. He probly ain't got a night's sleep since I left. The trade-off
was August. You got a better idea?"
"I did once." The tone was bitter and accusatory.
Ennis said nothing, straightened up slowly, rubbed at his forehead;
a horse stamped inside the trailer. He walked to his truck, put his
hand on the trailer, said something that only the horses could hear,
turned and walked back at a deliberate pace.
"You been a Mexico, Jack?" Mexico was the place. He'd heard. He was
cutting fence now, trespassing in the shoot-em zone.
"Hell yes, I been. Where's the f*ckin problem?" Braced for it all
these years and here it came, late and unexpected.
"I got a say this to you one time, Jack, and I ain't foolin. What
I don't know," said Ennis, "all them things I don't know could get you
killed if I should come to know them."
"Try this one," said Jack, "and I'll say it just one time. Tell you
what, we could a had a good life together, a f*ckin real good life.
You wouldn't do it, Ennis, so what we got now is Brokeback Mountain.
Everthing built on that. It's all we got, boy, f*ckin all, so I hope
you know that if you don't never know the rest. Count the damn few times
we been together in twenty years. Measure the f*ckin short leash you
keep me on, then ask me about Mexico and then tell me you'll kill me
for needin it and not hardly never gettin it. You got no f*ckin idea
how bad it gets. I'm not you. I can't make it on a couple a high-altitude
f*cks once or twice a year. You're too much for me, Ennis, you son of
a whoreson *****. I wish I knew how to quit you."
Like vast clouds of steam from thermal springs in winter the years
of things unsaid and now unsayable -- admissions, declarations, shames,
guilts, fears -- rose around them. Ennis stood as if heart-shot, face
grey and deep-lined, grimacing, eyes screwed shut, fists clenched, legs
caving, hit the ground on his knees.
"Jesus," said Jack. "Ennis?" But before he was out of the truck,
trying to guess if it was heart attack or the overflow of an incendiary
rage, Ennis was back on his feet and somehow, as a coat hanger is straightened
to open a locked car and then bent again to its original shape, they
torqued things almost to where they had been, for what they'd said was
no news. Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved.
What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor
understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis
had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying
some shared and sexless hunger.
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18 嶄猟井